Webforum is a Web-based project management software, available as a subscription service from the Swedish Software as a Service, “SaaS”, provider Webforum Europe AB. Webforum was the result of a thesis work written by Andreas Massarsch at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm in 1998 as a response to the need for a common workspace for international research projects within Geotechnology. In 2007, Webforum won the "ECM World Practice Award" at Cebit

CeBIT

CeBIT is the world's largest and most international computer expo. CeBIT is held each year on the world's largest fairground in Hanover, Germany, and is a barometer of the state of the art in information technology...

 for displaying how a small company, Berthold Becker Gmbh, could create a complete collaboration workspace just using the Webforum SaaS solution, i.e. completely without any installed software or investements in hardware.

Webforum is also used in the education in Project Management at the Royal Institute of Technology as well as by PMI for conference projects. Webforum currently has more than 50 000 users. Customers also include a number of public organizations, such as the Municipalities of Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Lidingö

Lidingö

Lidingö is an island in the inner Stockholm archipelago, located north east of central Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. It is also the seat of Lidingö Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 44,000 inhabitants in 2011....

, Södertälje

Södertälje

Södertälje is a city and the seat of Södertälje Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 86,069 inhabitants in 2010.The industrial city, about south of Stockholm, is the home to truck maker Scania AB and a top 10 pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca....

 and Espoo

Espoo

Espoo is the second largest city and municipality in Finland. The population of the city of Espoo is . It is part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area along with the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. Espoo shares its eastern border with Helsinki and Vantaa, while enclosing Kauniainen....

.

The initial product was focused more on collaboration and knowledge sharing than on project management. There was also an external knowledge-sharing service available for everyone at no charge, called Geoforum, that was developed by the same team at this time.

The Webforum software provides a suite of project management and team collaboration tools, similar to such applications as Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft Sharepoint

Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is a web application platform developed by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint is typically associated with web content management and document management systems, but it is actually a much broader platform of web technologies, capable of being configured into a wide...

. However, no software installation is needed, clients subscribe to the system and pay a per-user-per-month fee. Webforum Project has integrated web publishing, which makes it possible to set up an entire Extranet

Extranet

An extranet is a computer network that allows controlled access from the outside, for specific business or educational purposes. An extranet can be viewed as an extension of a company's intranet that is extended to users outside the company, usually partners, vendors, and suppliers...

 for a project office or a single project. This also makes it easier to integrate a project methodology with a project management tool.

The Webforum software is developed on a .NET platform using SQL Server as a database engine.
The service is available in seven languages: English, German, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Danish.

Features

Webforum features include:
Project Planning, Resource Planning, Time Reporting, Project Reporting and Business Intelligence, Project Office Overview, Document Management, Task/Issue Management, Web Publishing, Project Calendars, Discussion Forum, Contacts

See also

• Computer-supported collaboration

Computer-supported collaboration

Computer-supported collaboration research focuses on technology that affects groups, organizations, communities and societies, e.g., voice mail and text chat. It grew from cooperative work study of supporting people's work activities and working relationships...

• List of project management software
• SaaS

Saas

SAAS is an abbreviation for* Social Accountability Accreditation Services* Software as a service * Student Awards Agency for Scotland* Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences* South Australian Ambulance Service...

External links

• Webforum Web site
• Directory of SaaS providers